Hello, welcome to my blog

Mostly you will find, here, transcribed entries from the secret diary that I used to keep as a teenager between 1970 and 1975. I try to be honest with my transcriptions, but, just occasionally I do edit, to protect myself or others from embarrassment or some other emotion.
Also, though, I like to do a brief review of the books I have been reading, so these are interspersed throughout. I reserve the right to write blog entries, also, about other random things.
Why do I keep this blog? I don't know. I am an academic and one of my research interests is around how people construct their own identities. The diary transcriptions, and what I write about my books, are very much about revealing something of my identity.

Monday, 31 January 2011

Pamela Aidan - Abandoned reading . . .

An Assembly such as This by Pamela Aidan

4 out of 10



A very good friend lent me 3 volumes and this was the first.
It is a great idea for a novel, based on Fitzwilliam Darcy's story, as it runs parallel to the events recounted in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.
It is well-written, mimicking Austen's style.
But, ooooh, nooo, it can't be pulled off - for lots of reasons. No-one can replicate a writing style from the late 18th century in a way that is convincing enough, and no-one can replicate the finesse and subtlety of Austen's writing.
I found that I didn't want to know what Darcy was thinking - he was obsessing about Elizabeth Bennet all the time from the beginning according to this book, but that's not how I imagined it.

I suddenly realise how much I appreciate the bits in a novel that aren't told by the author. Now there is something to make me think.

I gave it to 50 pages, then stopped.

Sorry.

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